


Ocean of Emotion

by RyMagnatar



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Timeline, Doomed Timeline, In the Veil, M/M, SGRUB, on the meteor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2013-06-29
Packaged: 2017-11-03 01:45:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/375711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RyMagnatar/pseuds/RyMagnatar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eridan discovers loneliness, love and laughter at the hands of none-other than Gamzee.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Shores of Isolation

**Author's Note:**

> >Loneliness doesn't have to be suffered alone  
> >Especially when you share the shore with one  
> >Who has known it longer and deeper than you ever have.

The first time you hear his voice, you're hardly more than four sweeps.

You're swimming in the ocean, slowly, lazily, along the shore because you haven't for a perigee and it's only then when it feels good- the best. You haven't seen many other trolls in almost as long- you don't count Feferi because seeing your moirail-to-be is as common to you as styling your unruly hair.

You're on your back under the water, close enough to the surface to see the sky above and that's when you hear it. A distant sound, muffled through the water, something you haven't heard in this area before. 

So you slow your swimming.

You tread water, lift your head to the surface. 

And you hear his voice.

And it's the very first time your heart ever breaks- and you'll never forget it- because that's the day you discovered what  _lonely_  was and it took listening to him to show you.

* * *

That first time, you do nothing but listen, half hidden behind a rock, leaning against it as the waves lapped around you and the voice drifted over the water. You listen with nothing but pain in your chest, not quite yet understanding the sheer feeling of pity that was growing inside of you.

His lusus was gone. From what it sounded like, his lusus was  _always_  gone. You wonder what that would be like, to be alone in your hive. It makes you want to whimper, but you clench your jaw because you're stronger than that, aren't you? Not only is his lusus gone- he doesn't know where he goes to and after listening longer, you realize that he doesn't know when he'll be back. You hear in that voice a despair, hidden under a young, vulnerable softness, a darkness that says hope is a distant- unfamiliar thing to this troll.

You clench your fist, wondering how a lusus could be so cruel. But at the same time you are struck with a fear. What if yours simply decided to leave you? What if you failed it, as this troll felt he failed his? 

That kind of thinking makes it hard to breath and hard to concentrate on staying behind the rock and a large wave crashes over you and sends you spiraling away from your hidden listening spot. 

But it doesn't confuse you enough that you can't swim away, and so you do. You will not be caught by this landdweller, especially when pity and fear fills you to the gills. You're too young to completely understand this. You just know you can't be caught. You know you have to leave- pretend this didn't happen- so you do.

As you swim away to safety, you tell yourself you'll never have to think about this again because you'll never see anything like this again. 

You know you're lying to yourself- but that's hardly a surprise.

* * *

Listening to him talk to the ocean, to his lost lusus, is a ritual now. You don't always go to see him, and sometimes when you stop by he's not out by the shore, but whenever you go swimming alone, you always end up by those rocks.

After a few times you've discovered a perfectly suitable ledge to sit on and listen to him. As he gets older, he gets louder, angrier- throws rocks into the sea- and then, suddenly, his voice completely changes.

You find yourself trembling with anger when you realize that the clear, dark voice that was alternately despondent and violent is gone, and it's been replaced with this...fuzzy voice. You don't understand why he would change. You have to spy on him, visually, to see if you can see why, but since you never looked before- you don't know what the difference is.

You become infuriated at his dopy smile and distant expression. You become aggravated at his stupid droning, his mindless muttering and rambling about things that make no sense.

One time, when you swim away, he's not finished but you are. You're too upset at his change to sit and listen to this new troll. You swear to yourself that you won't ever come see him again here.

And this time, you keep your promise.

* * *

You've never felt so stupid or so alone in all your life.

You are quadrant-less now. 

You sit alone, staring at your husktop, and try to think.

_You are quadrant-less now._

Your mind goes to the cold ocean, that rough rock, that angry voice shouting into the air, the water, from ages ago. You feel like that voice, that troll, screaming and screaming about _how it wasn't motherfucking right to be abandoned by someone who was supposed to fucking care._

How long has it been since you've gone swimming? 

You leave your hive and you dive into the water. You just need some time to think, some time to stop feeling so awful.

You just need-- 

* * *

He's there.

He's on the shore. 

He's as dazed and glazed and fucking high as ever. 

But now you're not angry at him. Because now you get his hurt even better than you did before. Because now you don't have to pretend to feel that pain. Because now you truly pity him and you get what that means.

You move slowly towards the shore, then you rise out of the water and you're nearly in front of him before he sees you. His rumbling voice dies off and he stares at you a little and then he grins and greets you with a  _hello my motherfucking fishy brother_ as if he's known you as long as you've known him.

You have no idea what you're going to say or do, but you walk up to him anyway. He pulls out a pie, a tin full of green goop that looks suspiciously like sopor slime, and offers it to you. You know that you're not supposed to ingest the slime- you know that he, being an indigoblood as you can see from his clothing- knows that as well.

Well right now you don't fucking care what people have told you not to do. So you drop down beside him on the sand, take the pie and begin to eat from it.

He shares it with you, all smiles and honks and motherfucker this and miracle that. The more slime you eat, the shinier his voice becomes and you find yourself leaning against his shoulder and he starts scooping the slime from the tin with his hands both for himself and for you.

Somewhere along the line you start sucking on his fingers because you pity him and you're alone, so alone, and you can feel in the pit of your stomach that if you don't do something, and do something  _quickly_  that you'll be alone for the rest of your cod-damned life. You're just grateful he doesn't shove you off but seems to like the way your tongue swirls around his fingers and how you suck on them and it seems that he only wants to take his fingers away to get more slime and you're okay with that too. The stuff fuzzes everything over, from the sound of the ocean to the thrum of your own pumping blood in your ears. 

Sucking on his fingers leads to crawling into his lap, cradled up in it as he feeds you the sopor and between each lick of his green fingers you're licking at his neck and breathing in his scent and you're sure you hear mewling but dare not believe it to be  _you_ to make such a weak sound- but then you hardly think its _him_ either. Maybe then he falls back or he falls forward but either way you two end up on the sand, sprawled together, legs and limbs jumbled and your scarf is half off and he winds it around his own neck as well as yours and you don't care either way because you can still kiss his neck and lick it and breath him in.

He smells like the land and the sea, like a storm brewing on the crests of waves and like danger and anger and sorrow and dizzying, dizzying drug-induced stupor and you had no idea that last one even had a flavor but you know that's exactly what he tastes like. At one point you think he's asking your name, and with a huff you give it and he returns with a sloppy grin and his own name and it  both curls in your mouth and pops off your lips as you repeat it back to him- slow and low.

He kisses you for that. And kisses you. And kisses you. He says that the way you speak is some sort of ocean born miracle and you want to tell him that miracles are lies but you cant because suddenly his big hands are spread out over your back and you realize that one of them is on your ass, squeezing and pushing you closer. And then you realize that his bulge is hardening and its against your thigh and you're pretty sure you pity him enough to make this go farther but then again-

You're rolled and flipped and pinned on the sand before you can make some sort of muddled attempt to talk him or maybe yourself out of it and his mouth is on you everywhere at once. He isn't biting, no, but he licking and nipping and so close to drawing blood that every time he almost does your hips arch up just a little into him. This makes him chuckle, softly, so softly, against your skin or in your hair and you want to growl at him but all you can feel is cold and good and wet and needy so instead you mewl and spread your legs for him.

Between the pinning and the nipping and the scraping of fangs on skin you decide that you'll give him as much of you as he'll take and you find that he's willing to take more of you than anyone else ever has-- _and part of you fears ever will._

He's grinding against you and you're grinding against him and its the friction that's heating you both up. You're highbloods, so you're coldbloods and you just came from the ocean and he's been out here for hours before- or so you assume. His bulge feels strangely hot and hard against you and you're trying to figure out a way to wriggle out of your pants when you feel his hand move down there, move your leg and rub your nook right through the cloth.

You cry out softly, biting your lip until it bleeds because no one has ever touched you like that and part of you wonders if anyone has touched him like that either. But he seems about your age so maybe this is a first for him too?

In any case he's got your pants working lower and lower on your hips and he's forgotten to unbutton them so they are still so tight, so tight!, against your bulge and make you arch your hips up and moan at the constriction. They're tight enough that your boxers slide down right with those pants and soon you're exposed and you can only feel your pants on one leg and oh  _Cod_ -

That's his hand on your nook, his fingers pushing in and you don't even have the breath to whimper in pain or pleasure because its been knocked right out of you at the feeling of his cool hand on your flushed bodypart. He's stroking and rubbing just inside the folds and you wonder, absently, distantly, if there even if a fucking bucket close enough for what is going on now.

And then he's pushing those long clawed fingers in deeper, kissing you as he does, swallowing up any sound you makes. You claw his shoulders, spread your legs for him and kiss and kiss and kiss him right back.

You have no sense of proper time but you think its too soon when you hear the rustle of his clothing and feel, oh so hard and oh so big, his bonebulge's tip right against your dripping nook. His mouth is at your ear, then, and he mumbles something- he almost sounds drunk- that there's no pail around right now but  _later_  but _next time_ there will be and then you two can fill a pail as far as it will let you. You're keening now, not because he's pushing inside (although that was a good portion of why) but because he's already said that this isn't a single, messy make out gone too far on the beach. 

You feel hope, filling your chest, twisting its way through your body. Hope that he accepted your pity and pities you in return. 

Briefly, oh so briefly, you wonder why he pities you. You didn't even properly know each other before today.

But then thought is driven from you as he grips your hips and thrusts into you. The pleasure is exquisite. The pain is just as much so. You beg him for more, shameless and needy, and he gives it to you and then some. You feel your shoulders digging into the sand and his claws into your hips but you don't fucking care how dirty this gets you. You'll roll in muddy waters or slime to get him to touch you like this again and you know it.

You feel like he knows it too, and he's pushing and grinding and making you make noises you didn't even know could be made. He wraps one hand around your own bulge and you fucking lose it. You cry out his name. You shake. You tremble. You clench. Somewhere in the middle of your orgasmic frenzy, he begins as well, filling you and making you moan even deeper. 

The time seems to stretch on and on until you two are lying entangled on the sand. High tide is coming in and you can feel the water beginning to lap at your toes.

He's draped over you, thin for all his height and big hands and comfortably heavy, and breathing against your fin and nuzzling the side of your head and then he whispers something to you that makes your heart almost stop forever and your eyes grow wide with shock.

_Motherfucking missed you, my rock listening brother._


	2. Shallows of Tranquility

The sensation is an awful lot like drifting, weightless, in water. The sopor on your tongue is a sickly sweet taste that you can’t dream of living without and in the back of your mind you know that your brain is being addled by eating it, but you don’t care.

You don’t care because you can lie on a pile of clown horns and feel like you’re drifting in the deep waters of the ocean. Gamzee describes it as flying, floating on soft clouds through the moonlit sky, but he doesn’t know about the deep ocean.

He doesn’t know about the sweet pressure of all that water above you, or the way you really can go anywhere you want just with careful, measured strokes of the water. He doesn’t know what it’s like to go so deep that there’s nothing but glittering deep sea jellyfish and you. No light. No air. Nothing but floating in the deep water.

You don’t argue with him about it, that would defeat the purpose of the sopor. Honestly, you can’t even think to begin to argue with him about anything. Lying on the pile of horns with his head near yours and the two of you sleeping off an ample helping of pie, fighting is the last thing you think of.

In fact, you didn’t really think of it at all. It was more like you would stumble across it wholly by accident, usually in the form of someone on trollian telling you what you _should_ be doing. Probably Karkat. He was unusually helpful in that manner. Always telling you that there were all these things that you had to do, all these _responsibilities_ that you had.

But that was just silly.  You had no responsibilities. At least none that you weren’t handling absolutely perfectly. Karkat needed to relax, was your opinion and it was one that you shared with Gamzee.

Wait now…where was he?

You sit up a little faster than you should, your think pan swirling around inside of your skull. Putting a hand to your head, you realize that you have an oncoming headache. That, of course, means that you need a pie to eat.

It was one of those strange things you noticed but didn’t about the pies. Gamzee tended to do well eating them. They just made him the best guy around. Even when he was dry for a day or two, he could maintain that cool, smiling and peaceful. He had a good handle on himself, you thought, which was unlike you at all.

If you went a day or two without sopor pie, you ended up with a headache so bad that the last thing on your mind was the only thing on your mind. There were those scratches along the hall and the hole in the wall from that night when the oven broke and the two of you couldn’t make pie. He had been all right, been sorta stable but fuck that.

It was like you were staring down a black hole, lined with jagged teeth, waiting to consume  you bit by bit, skin and bone, flesh and blood, layer by layer. It’s not just a pit to nothingness, though, it’s the deep, open maw of Gl’bglyb, and from the darkness come words that you were never supposed to hear, whispered to you from the holes in your mind that the sopor has burned into place. Your reaction was awful, and violent, and

Not your concern right now.

Because that was ages ago, or maybe it wasn’t, you can’t recall the time accurately. You do recall how Gamzee told you to not think about the darkness. _Don’t think about the motherfucking holes in your think pan, brother, just feel the pie in your veins and rock back into the feeling of the motherfucking messiahs’ miraculous gift._ And what matters now is where is Gamzee.

Gamzee, Gamzee. You need to get your head out of your mind for a bit and look for him. You’ve got a headache coming on and the tin beside you is empty. You need pie. You need Gamzee. You need to find a shirt.

Well, shirt can wait. You’re not cold and your gills are used to the air exposure. Besides, you have a few scratches that need that open air to help them heal. A grubby shirt would only make the wound fester. What you really need is to bandage them, but you can’t recall exactly how to do that right now. You only remember that a clean open cut is better than one with dirty cloth stretched over it, so you forgo the shirt and go shuffling through the hive to find Gamzee.

The kitchen is where you expect him, pulling fresh pie from the oven and maybe playing a little with other ingredients. He’s got interest in cooking more than pie, though it’s what he makes the most of. The room, however, is empty of his presence, but not of signs that he was just there. There’s a scrawled note next to a half-eaten pie, telling you to finish it off.

Gratefully, eagerly, you do so. You suck down the green slime, over your tongue and down your throat and into your stomach so that the effects get into your blood, into your mind and make the sharp edges of the dark holes soft like loose wool. The tin is empty soon enough, licked clean in your eagerness, and you are satisfied.

Gamzee is still missing, but you’re not worried for him. If he’s not in the kitchen and not on the pile, he’s out on the beach. It was logic, that little scrap of it that you had left anyway, it was process of elimination. Science!

Which was fake.

Wait.

You stand in the kitchen, staring at something. You’re not really looking at it you’re trying to remember.

Which was the fake one? Science? Magic? Miracles?

Nonsense. Miracles weren’t fake. You saw them everywhere. Well, _Gamzee_ saw them everywhere and you just believed him. But that’s what miracles were. Or was that faith?

Fuck.  You run your hand through your hair, scratching at your scalp in confusion. Which was which? Which was true and which was false and which one did you have and did he see and

You had to find Gamzee after all. You needed clarity. You needed understanding. You needed him.

It’s colder outside that it is in the hive, but you’ve dealt with worse. You know you have because you remember them, remember the cold depths of… of something… so vividly, so physically that you don’t question it.

And there he is on the beach, sitting in the sand, with his computer in his lap and a smile for you. Suddenly everything is all right again, the world centers around him, his smile, his grey and white face and that smudge of green on the corner of his mouth. You kiss that green away, falling into his lap, into his arms. You curl your arms about his body and bury your face against his neck. He’s all you need. He’s your warmth and your center. He’s your light and your shelter.

You kiss him and he kisses you.

Then he asks you to join his team.

* * *

Honestly, you have little memory of how you ended up here. There was the beach with Gamzee and then there was a game. It wasn’t very long, and there was a lot of fuckery and bullshit to go along with it, but it was fun while it lasted. You spent about thirty seconds on your own insane little world before you abandoned the vicious angels, the looming cathedrals, in favor of Gamzee’s world.

But now you were in a complete other world. A world that was colder that the depths of the ocean and blander than the halls of your barely remembered cathedrals. All your friends were there, sure enough, but what was there to do?

Ha. Well. That wasn’t really a question, now was it?

There was plenty to do. At least there was plenty for you to do. It was more a question of _where_ could you go and do it. As it was universally considered Rude and Inappropriate to do much more in public with your matesprit than cuddle or hold hands, you spent a lot of your time searching out those dark corners of the meteor. One of the bonus’s about those dark corners was to avoid the way that Feferi’s bright eyes seemed to cut through the haze of sopor and make you feel.

Feel miserable, feel guilty, feel ashamed, you didn’t care what flavor of feeling it was that she gave you, but as long as it wasn’t contentment or pleasure, it had no business to be given to you.

Other than finding every surface and then some to wriggle into, with Gamzee at your side, ever at your side these days, there was one other enjoyment.

Computers and technology had always been one of those curiosities in your life. You didn’t have a knack for them as Captor did, but you did use them, found them useful. If they fucked up and broke, though, you were the type to find a way to get them airborne so you could riddle them with holes. That had a special, deep, delightful spot in your soul; throwing things into the air to shoot down again.

But since you slid down that slippery slope of sopor pies, you found a strange delight in watching videos. It wasn’t something you did much of Before. Back when something else, someone else, mattered.

Back when you weren’t happy. And you are absolutely happy now. Completely and utterly.

Happy when you sit back in your chair, watching aliens run around in their lives, laughing when they do, crying a little when something bad happens to them. You understand, now, how Karkat can get so excited about his movies, when they have people like this!

It’s a good filler, when you’re not busy with Gamzee, when you’re not avoiding Feferi, when you need something to do that doesn’t take much effort. It’s fun. You’re elated when you watch, and all those good feelings just make the sopor high last so much longer.

Which is good, so good, because Gamzee’s begun to mumble about how the sopor’s running dry. But that isn’t now, not now, not yet. You’ve got a heavenly soft feeling about your mind and you watch the little aliens, the little humans, run around in the computer.

From watching others interact with the humans, you get it in your addled brain that a little chatter might be fun too.

It takes a while for the idea to filter down through your consciousness enough for you to do it, but eventually, you do.

With a nervous fluttering in your stomach, what could be a bad feeling if you thought about it for the barest second, you open up a dialogue with the humans. What was better than watching a movie? Why, talking to the actors!

**\-- caligulasAquarium  [ CA]   began trolling turntechGodhead  [TG]   --  **


	3. Tides of Mirth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was like you were staring down a black hole, lined with jagged teeth, waiting to consume you bit by bit, skin and bone, flesh and blood, layer by layer. It’s not just a pit to nothingness, though, it’s the deep, open maw of Gl’bglyb, and from the darkness come words that you were never supposed to hear, whispered to you from the holes in your mind that the sopor has burned into place.
> 
> Your reaction was awful, and violent, and it was all that existed anymore.

It was a pit. Jagged edges. So dark in the middle that the black was turning blue, turning purple. Turning red.

No. Wait. That didn’t make any sense. Black didn’t go red.

Did it?

But you look up into half lidded eyes and you see what Gamzee sees and he’s seeing blood. Red blood. Blue blood. Green blood.

Black goes red.

The grease paint is smooth on your skin, and smoother still because Gamzee’s thumbs are moving over the paint again and again. Got to get it motherfucking perfect, he says it now. He says it again and again. You let your eyes close, but the blackness in his eyes is inside of you now. It is in the back of your mind, a hole with teeth. It was that gaping shadow, that pit.

Lined with fangs all the way back, looking into the darkness in your mind was much like when you had looked into the open mouth of a great shark. It had welcomed you with bright teeth and a mouth that went straight into its gut. That creature had threatened to swallow you whole, or chunk by bitten off chunk, whichever came easiest.

Living without the sopor was like that. No soft green bubbles to sing you softly to sleep. No slime to cushion your mind into an mindless life. Just blood in the vision of Gamzee’s eyes and hungry holes in the back of your mind, aching for a meal.

You let Gamzee paint your face. It pacifies your soul in a primal way. It reminds you of paps from a moirail you used to have, once upon a clear and focused mind. In the shadows of your new home, he paints your face and then you brush his hair.

It’s ritualistic, reassuring, relaxing. You know, distantly, that you’re acting pale for your matesprit, but he does the same. He doesn’t dispute it, complain about it or act with shame. He’ll touch you to calm you in public or private- though public is a place you both shy away from now.

( _Remember the blood in his eyes. There are reasons you keep him away, that you leave that beast in you both to starve. There were so few of you. Not enough to feed that need and survive. Protect them. Soothe him. Soothe yourself._ )

So pale and flushed, you survive. Everyone survives.

But there is still blood Gamzee’s eyes.

**

It was a mess. Metal and flesh, bone and blood; left on the floor without honor, without respect.

Well. You call the body an it. You always call corpses it. Male or female, what was dead was dead, and he was most assuredly dead.

Gamzee doesn’t want to believe it. Shaking, shuddering, he approaches the body the way you have seen so many young trolls approach their dying or dead lusus. The resemblance is so strong you look up for her, your old partner. This was when she poached them, caught them up and bound them. When they were defenseless. When they were broken. She ensnared them, mind and body, and fed them to her own lusus.

She is not here. You feel like this is her work, though. She always had something for this pathetic little piece of dirt from the moment she read that fucking journal. Useless trash. Biased information. Skewed. Wrong. Utterly wrong about your own ancestry.

She has killed the lusus, and in this case, wounded the juvenile troll. She has made him, your matesprit, tremble in agony of heart and mind.

_(What little mind is left. Left in him. Left in you. What have you done? Remember the blood in his eyes.)_

Did she know that she took your place in this action? She has left the vulnerable troll with you. You watch him cradle that empty head for ages, standing there with one hand curled around the handle of your wand.

How easy. So easy.

But he looked up at you in need and not with bloodlust and you think that is why you didn’t fade back into old routines.

She left him ( _it_ ) for you; a ripe fruit on a low hanging branch. You didn’t pluck it.

* * *

Maybe there were more holes in him than in you.

You had the one, the one with the maw agape. The one that ached for colored blood. You saw that in his eyes so often these last few days? months? sweeps? --

_(Waking is like sleeping. Everything is nightmarish. You ache inside and out but dare not give in.)_

\--that you don’t recognize him when he looks like this. When he holds that head in his lap, touching limp, blood sticky hair and croons to it. You don’t understand this aching sadness. You try. You really try. But without the sopor it’s so fucking hard to _feel_ anything but the aching pit. He has holes in his mind, in his soul, that you didn’t even consider and before when you could feel the world with every single breath you didn’t even see them.

Now you see them. Now you see everything.

You see the tears in his eyes. You see the blood on his fingers. You see the grey paint on dead lips.

The pit inside of you is grinning.

You are growing so tired of seeing everything.

* * *

It’s a brittle moment. Walls of the thinnest glass are between him and insanity. The head sits on a wall with another, waiting, the two of them staring out with three empty eyes. You took the eye patch. You like the eye patch. It reminds you of her.

But the break happens suddenly.

Happened for him like it happened for you.

One simple conversation.

A little chat.

Words exchanged.

You didn’t have to know what was said, just watch your matesprit.

( _Matesprit, such a loose term with him. He loves that head more than you. When he isn’t there, you pretend to shoot at it with your wand and make it explode. One of these nights…)_

His shoulders rise, his head leans forward. He’s grumbling. Growling. Clacking away at the keyboard with the single-mindedness of a zealous believer. You know that when that vile video is passed to him, that delicate wall he’s kept up to shield his mind from his subconscious will shatter.

The husktop goes the way of the wall, broken into bits under the battering of his clubs. Maybe he is reacting more violently because of the death of his beloved. Maybe he is so physical in his rage because he has restricted himself for so long. Maybe he is so cruel in his expression because he has finally lost the source of his mirth.

You pick up your wand. You draw it on him. He stares at you, at first threatened, then threatening. At the last moment, you lower your weapon.

Long ago you accepted your fate, when guileless golden eyes had begged you for help, when the heiress herself held out her hands to you in supplication. You thought yourself in her service, thought yourself her protector. You imagined that you held aloft weapons in her name, shields in her defense. You were her knight in gleaming armor, but it was not so.

The devilish game knew you better than you knew yourself. At first you were upset that you weren’t a knight. A knight fought tooth and nail. A knight was strong, he could be cruel, but he could be kind. A knight protected others; those who could not defend themselves.

But you had not protected her, had not needed to. She would have been fine without you. She would have found a way.

( _That’s witches for you. They figure it out. They find a way. They build upon, create, and rework a situation to do as it pleased them.)_

You were a prince; a destroyer. You came. You conquered. You rested your heels on the skulls of your enemies. You were not a shield to cower behind. You were the axe to cleave a path. You were the gun to punch a hole through in no one else’s name but your own. The knight might fight; but the prince slaughtered.

And that was what she had required of you. A butcher.

You smile in the mirth that your matesprit had discarded and let him lead the way. Let the knight protect. Let the witch manipulate. The prince would destroy, with the bard guiding him down a bloody path.

* * *

Laughter. Joyous, brilliant laughter.

It ripped its way out of your throat and you had no control over it. It echoed down the hallways and throughout rooms. You would laugh and hear it bounce back and that would make your matesprit laugh and then his would be echoed back and make you laugh. It was a continuous cycle.

Blood dripped from his face. It splattered your clothing. Blood stained his pants green. It soaked your shoes in navy blue.

The joyousness that overcame you both when brilliant red spilled over the floor was almost enough to curb that need inside of you. It did, however, begin to soothe your matesprit.

Almost, so very nearly, you were lulled into a state of ease.

Then the beast carved out in your skull by sopor’s hard edge roared into life and demanded more. The lust in your blood was stronger than your matesprit’s; but what made you happy made him happy.

Jade made you happy, a rarity in blood much alike that bright red splattered upon your skin. The more jade you got, the happier you became. She was the only one who drew her weapon in time; as though she always knew that there was a bloodthirsty beast in your mind, in your matesprit’s mind.

With three left, you found two together, upon the surface. The burning suns, the gleaming stars about you bore witness as you bested your once-rival in a duel. His body hit the ground with a wet slap. Then your attention shifted to tearful eyes.

The ease with which you punched a hole in the heiress’s chest made you giggle madly. The gnashing hunger in you feasted on her royal blood. Where you began with that asshole in your duel, your matesprit finished.  Bone and yellow brain matter mingled with the green flesh already stuck to his club. Mirth filled your veins as you finally hunger. It was not satisfied, though, and seemed utterly bottomless. Fuchsia was not enough to slake your thirst.  You craved more.

Insatiable, the two of you sought out the very last one.

It was like a game. A game to all three of you. She even joined in your laughter, until she caught scent of all those different colors, all those different blood splatters. Even she could not excuse it away in a game, in a role play.

At long last there was only you and only him. That hole wasn’t filled but it was appeased. For now.

He painted murals on the top of the meteor while you watched it approach the glowing green sun. Green like sopor. You slept in its light; never once thinking about how your little meteor managed to propel itself towards that sun or how so many of the others had been gathered in one location making such easy access.

* * *

You felt him.

Instantly.

Recognized his presence.

It woke you with a gasp so sharp your lungs burned.

Your matesprit had his head tilted up, watching already. Blood-paint covered him from head to toe. As you stood, you looked down to see the gruesome drawing around you, around the bodies of the others. You gripped your wand, ready for anything.

There were four waiting. Him, another like him, and two more of your kind, both of whom were supposed to be dead.

You looked at them, waiting for the hunger for their deaths to burst into life within you.

Nothing.

Your matesprit twirled clubs back and forth; back and forth.

They didn’t land. They only looked down. But then he, in red from head to toe, drew as sword and landed.

Before you could blink, breathe, think, he rushed forward.

_(Knight.)_

He struck at your matesprit. Your only companion in the dark sopor-less life you lived now. Without him, no one would be able to understand you. Without him, you would truly be alone.

_(Don’t glorify him. He was the one who made you this way.)_

They fought faster than you could see, though you sought in eagerness to follow their movements. Up above the others waited. Watched.

Footsteps smeared the blood. Bodies were used to jump over, trip over, to fight around. Backwards, your matesprit approached you. You held your position until he was just in front of you. As you moved out of the way, the knight, that alien called a human, struck at you instead.

You felt blood on your face, the sting of a cut across your cheek, on the fin by your ear. When you wiped with your hand, your fingers came away with purple alone. Where had the grease paint gone?

( _A computer reflection of your face had showed you that monstrosity. You scrubbed it clean. Don’t you remember? There had been more than blood in your eyes.)_

When human feet slid across brown blood, your matesprit spat out vile words in a fury. His dedication to a decapitated head had been ruined by that step. The knight only marred it more, sending your companion into a tailspin of rage.

You don’t realize you’re approaching them until your wand is against a pale throat and your hand is holding back a club. You look at reflective glasses, see only your face. You look to golden eyes, see only his wrath. His arm trembles as you hold it back. You are only barely stronger than him- but were you older, were he older ( _bigger_ )- that would not be the case.

He brings up the other club. You kick him back, sacrificing your position to have him thrown to the floor. The human hurries back, sword up. You turn your wand on him, on Gamzee.

Back curl your lips over your sharp teeth as you growl. There are so many words you have to say to him.

_(Why did you give me sopor when you knew it would tear apart my mind? Why did you pull me into your life of misery hidden under mirth? Why did you drag me deeper and deeper into your beliefs when I didn’t hold them? How could I misinterpret the beast inside of me? How did I not know whose blood I craved for before now? How dare you hold a body-less head above me in your heart! How dare you pervert what semblance of normality we had left! What do you have to say for yourself?)_

But none of them come pouring out of your mouth. You hold tight to your anger, cold and bright like the light you hold in your hand. You control it. You direct it. Your passion is your tool, not the other way around.

He got to his feet.

You leveled your wand at him and fired.

The dark pit in your mind laughed as it bit down, glittering teeth stained with indigo blood as it spun back and away. Back where it belonged, in your blood, in your subconscious, in your dreams. Where it would lurk and hide and bring you agony in your sleepless days, as it always did before.

His shoes smoked where he had stood, in the middle of his painting in brown and blue.

Sagging to your knees, you laugh until you weep. You don’t know what is going to happen next, but it doesn’t matter.

You were doomed the moment you set foot on Gamzee’s beach and became a part of his broken world. Pulled under by a tide you never saw coming and didn’t feel until far too late. Now you were stranded and there was nothing but blood on your hands and a great emptiness in your chest.

When you close your eyes, all you see are Feferi’s shocked, pain filled eyes. 


End file.
